Kopi Luwak
An Indonesian Island Treasure
by Chris Rubin

Coffee grows in dozens of countries around the world. Some varieties have earned a special reputation, often based on a combination of rarity, unusual circumstances and particularly good flavor. These coffees, from Jamaican Blue Mountain to Kona to Tanzanian Peaberry, command a premium price. But perhaps no coffee in the world is in such short supply, has such unique flavors and an, um, interesting background as Kopi Luwak. And no coffee even comes close in price: Kopi Luwak sells for $75 per quarter pound. Granted, that's substantially less than marijuana, but it's still unimaginably high for coffee.

Kopi (the Indonesian word for coffee) Luwak comes from the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi (formerly Celebes), which are part of the Indonesian Archepelago's 13,677 islands (only 6,000 of which are inhabited). But it's not strictly the exotic location that makes these beans worth their weight in silver. It's how they're "processed."

On these Indonesian islands, there's a small marsupial called the paradoxurus, a tree-dwelling animal that is part of the sibet family. Long regarded by the natives as pests, they climb among the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries. Who knows who first thought of it, or how or why, but what these animals eat they must also digest and eventually excrete. Some brazen or desparate -- or simply lazy -- local gathered the beans, which come through the digestion process fairly intact, still wrapped in layers of the cherries' mucilage. The enzymes in the animals' stomachs, though, appear to add something unique to the coffee's flavor through fermentation.

Curiously, Kopi Luwak isn't the only "specialty" food that begins this way. Argan is an acacia-like tree that grows in Morocco and Mexico which, through its olive-like fruit, yields argan oil. In Morocco, the Berbers encourage goats to climb the trees to eat the fruit. They later gather the goats' excrement and remove the pits, which they grind for oil to be used in massage, in cooking and as an aphrodisiac.

What started as, presumably, a way for the natives to get coffee without climbing the trees has since evolved into the world's priciest specialty coffee. Japan buys the bulk of Kopi Luwak, but M.P. Mountanos (800-229-1611), the first in the United States to bring in this exotic bean, recently imported 110 pounds after a seven year search for a reliable and stable supplier. "It's the rarest beverage in the world," Mark Mountanos says, estimating a total annual crop of less than 500 pounds.

Richard Karno, former owner of The Novel Cafe in Santa Monica, California, got a flyer from Mountanos about Kopi Luwak and "thought it was a joke." But Karno was intrigued, found it it was for real, and ordered a pound for a tasting. Karno sent out releases to the local press inviting them to a cupping. When no one responded, he roasted it and held a cupping for himself and his employees. Karno is very enthusiastic, a convert to Kopi Luwak. "It's the best coffee I've ever tasted. It's really good, heavy with a caramel taste, heavy body. It smells musty and jungle-like green, but it roasts up real nice. The LA Times didn't come to our cupping, but ran a bit in their food section, which hit the AP Wire service." And Karno and the folks at M.P. Mountanos have been inundated with calls ever since.

Mountanos says, "It's the most complex coffee I've ever tasted," attributing the unusual flavors to the natural fermentation the coffee beans undergo in the paradoxurus' digestive system. The stomach acids and enzymes are very different from fermenting beans in water. Mountanos says, "It has a little of everything pleasurable in all coffees: earthy, musty tone, the heaviest bodied I've ever tasted. It's almost syrupy, and the aroma is very unique." While it won't be turning up in every neighborhood cafe any day soon, Mountanos reports that Starbucks bought it for cuppings within the company.

In fact, most of Mountanos' customers have bought it for special cuppings. The Coffee Critic in San Mateo, California, though, occasionally sells Kopi Luwak to the public for $5 a cup. Owner Linda Nederman says she keeps the price low to allow people to experience the coffee. Nederman says that most of her people who try it are longtime customers, and they're "game to try something different and unusual. I've never had anybody complain, they all seem to feel it's worth the price." Nederman drinks it herself every time they brew it. "I've never tasted anything like it. It's an unbelieveable taste in your mouth: richness, body, earthiness, smooth." She also carries Jamaica Blue Mountain, Burundi Superior AA and Brazil FZA "Natural Dry," so her customers are used to fine and exotic coffees. Still, she reports, many are afraid to try Kopi Luwak.

Michael Beech, founding partner in Raven's Brew Coffee (no web site yet, but email them at ravencup@ptialaska.net), a roaster, wholesaler and mail order (800-91-RAVEN) merchant in Ketchikan, Alaska, sells roasted-to-order Kopi Luwak by the quarter pound ($75, including a free t-shirt depicting the coffee-making process). "It's excellent coffee. But I always caution customers that you can't get $75 worth of quality in any coffee, there's no such thing. You're paying for the experience of quaffing the world's rarest and most expensive coffee. The palate would recognize it as Sumatran or Indonesian right away. It has earthy tones of natural processed Sumatra Mandheling. It has low acidity with a syrupy body. There's something else there, a nuance in the flavor profile that I can't describe, and when I've challanged others, no one else can either. It's almost alien, a tiny little flavor note, highly exotic." The last bag he sold was to John Cleese of Monty Python and Fierce Creatures fame.

But not everyone is seduced by this exotic coffee's charms. "Kopi Luwak is, in my opinion, indistinguishable from many an average robusta, especially if you cup them next to each other," says Tim Castle, coffee expert and author of The Perfect Cup, referring to the lower grade of commercially available coffees. "Kopi Luwak's processing is unusual and attracts attention. In that sense, it is an interesting coffee."

Intrigued by the hype, I drove out to the Los Angeles warehouse of M.P. Mountanos to cup some Kopi with Andrew Vournas. The green beans, which range from tiny to elephant, have a faint smell that hints of a zoo or stables -- a little funky, not your average coffee aroma. He lightly roasts about 21 grams, enough beans for three cups, in a Jabez Burns two barrel sample roaster, a rare and beautiful machine dating from the '30s. Vournas gives the beans a light roast -- just after the second popping -- to accentuate the specific flavors of this rare coffee; a darker roast would obliterate the subtler flavors and replace them with a more generic taste. Vournas points out that this coffee, like most Indonesian-grown, has lots of moisture and roasts nicely.

Vournas gives the beans a course grind and mixes seven grams of coffee with four ounces of water in each of three cups. The aroma is rich and strong, and the coffee is incredibly full bodied, almost syrupy. It's thick with a hint of chocolate, and lingers on the tongue with a long, clean aftertaste. It's definitely one of the most interesting and unusual cups I've ever had.

Is it worth the money? Five dollars for a single cup? Sure, why not? You'll pay more than that in any Paris cafe for a bad au lait. Might as well spend it on something rare and exotic.

And a different point of view...

Dave Barry on Kopi Luwak

I have exciting news for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract.

And you just know there are plenty of people who would.

Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane.

These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like "mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino," beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.

Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are catching an airplane.

We want to strike the lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream "Get out of our way, you trend geeks, and let us have our coffee!"

But of course we couldn't do anything that active until we've had our coffee.

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.

I bet this kind of thing does not happen to heroin addicts. I bet that when serious heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do not tolerate waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them orders a hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles.

The reason some of us need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun.

No! Wait! What I meant to say is: Like any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we ingest too much. This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a group of workers, who were supposed to be making a birdbath, began drinking Egyptian coffee, which is very strong, and wound up constructing the pyramids.

I myself developed the coffee habit in my early 20s, when, as a "cub" reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., I had to stay awake while writing phenomenally boring stories about municipal government. I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and chicken-noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and they tasted pretty much the same. But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I've had several cups. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why I'm a columnist.)

But here's my point: This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far.

I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo Bishop.

He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to a "private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee," which "at $300 a pound ... is one of the most expensive drinks in the world."

The invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member of the weasel family" that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation" takes place, and the berry seeds - the coffee beans - come out of the luwak intact.

The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs.

The invitation states: "We wish to pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a rarity.

Or, as Bo Bishop put it: "They're selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound."

I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze. Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta.

I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they'd been, but they looked like regular coffee beans. In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off.

Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel?

So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some. You know how sometimes, when you're really skeptical about something, but then you finally try it, you discover that it's really good, way better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it.

But I predict it's going to be popular anyway, because it's expensive. One of these days, the people in front of me at the airport coffee place are going to be ordering decaf poopacino. I'm thinking of switching to heroin.

(Dave Barry is distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services. Lettrs can be mailed to Dave Barry, c/o Tropic Magazine, The Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132)